The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Portable Document Format (PDF) is a standard for a secure and reliable distribution and exchange of electronic documents and forms. PDF is a file format that preserves fonts, images, graphics, and layout of a source document, regardless of the application and platform used to create it. Adobe® PDF files are compact and complete, and can be shared, viewed, and printed by anyone with free Adobe Reader® software.
The data contained in several PDF forms may be aggregated by exporting field data from the several PDF forms into a spreadsheet. For example, a separate row in a spreadsheet may store fields' values of an original PDF form. Conversely, a separate column may store values associated with one particular field of several original PDF forms. The data from several PDF forms may also be exported into a database, where a database record may represent data associated with a separate PDF form.
When data from a plurality of PDF forms is aggregated into a spreadsheet or is imported into a database, a user may no longer have an ability to view each form's data in a visually rich presentation as part of the PDF form that it originally came from.